Church Heritage Record 620551

West tower, nave and chancel, both aisleless and of the same width, the former of four bays and the latter of five bays; the north vestry is attached to the chancel by a short passage.

The Battle of Shrewsbury was fought on the site now occupied by the church on Saturday, 21st July, 1403, the Eve of St. Mary Magdalene's Day. The battle, which was fought between an army led by the Lancastrian King Henry IV and a rebel army led by members of the Percy family, is perhaps principally remembered today as the climax of Shakespear's Henry IV Part I. Three years after the battle a memorial chapel, now the parish church, was founded on the field of battle by Richard Hussey who owned the area in question.

The date of the building is almost exactly fixed by documentary evidence. Hussey obtained his licence to build from the king on 28 October 1406. Service was performed there by 17 March 1409 and before February 1410 Roger Yve surrendered the land and the building to the king, so that the church must have been completed by that date. There is at first no mention of a tower in any documents, until Yve's will. of 13 October 1444 speaks of three bells hanging in the belfry but also gives instructions for the building of a belfry. There must therefore have been a temporary tower at first. The present tower was probably begun soon after Yve's death and was completed by Adam Grafton, Master of the college, in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.

Owing to its origins as a collegiate chapel rather than a parish church, with the consequent requirements of one chief altar and stalls for chaplains, the church at Battlefield has the long narrow proportions more usually associated with Oxford or Cambridge College chapels rather than parish churches. There are no aisles end the chancel is longer than the nave by one bay. There are also on the south side signs of masonry where the collegiate building may have abutted. The proud external appearance of the fabric today owes much to Pountney Smith's sympathetic restoration, and in particular to his boldly pierced parapets, vigorous gargoyles and handsome crocketted pinnacles. The nave parapets record the dates 1403 and 1862 and the arms of Henry IV.

Although the tower came rather later than the body of the church, it seems reasonable to start a description at the west end of the building. The tower is of three stages of which the lowest is much taller than the others and embraces both the west doorway and the two-light window above it. The doorway has a moulded arch under a moulded hood which returns at each end. The window (which may have been moved from the west wall of the nave) is of two lights with cinquefoiled heads and panel tracery above. The north and south walls are blind at this level.

The middle stage is lit by small rectangular windows in the north and south walls but its west wall is blind. The upper stage is separated from those below by a moulded stringcourse and has two light belfry openings in each direction with ogee cusped heads to the main lights and panel tracery. At the head of this stage is a decorative band of quatrefoil panelling resembling that at Atcham church and elsewhere in the county; above this are prominent gargoyles in the middle of each face and at the angles, with smaller carved heads between. The embattled parapet has large merlons moulded along the top and sides in the usual Perpendicular fashion with tall panelled pinnacles at each angle and in the middle of each side , all having prominent crockets. The western angles of the tower both have diagonal buttresses with unusual off-sets at each side at the lowest level and then a group of seven more off-sets before dying into the walls just below the parapet. The north-east angle has the upper part of a similar buttress rising from the west wall of the nave and the south-east angle has a square projection which houses the spiral staircase giving access to the upper floors. This is lit by loops on the south face and it has its own little buttress at the outer angle rising from the stringcourse which encircles the turret as well as the tower. It also has a parapet and had a pinnacle on the outer corner which fell through the nave roof in 1976; it has not yet been replaced. The tower is signed on the east face in the quatrefoil panelling by "Maister Adam Grafton" who was responsible for its completion.

The body of the church is long and divided into roughly equal bays. Since apart from the vestry it is virtually symmetrical, there are good reasons for describing the bays in pairs. Beginning from the west, the first bay of both north and south walls is provided with a three-light Perpendicular window with cinquefoiled main lights and panel tracery. The next bay in both walls has a doorway and no window. The doorway are original and have two ogee mouldings round the arch and moulded hoods. The ironwork on the doors (which is all of 1862) incorporates crowned "H" s for Henry IV. The third and fourth bays both have windows like that in the first bay with only slight variations in the tracery. With the fifth bay, however, comes one of the chief problems of the church. In both walls the three-light window has reticulated tracery formed of pointed quatrefoils of a style common in about 1330, but by 1410 most unusual. They cannot be re-used from an earlier church since there was not one, but they might possibly have come from Albright Hussey which had fallen into ruin by 1547 when Battlefield became the parish church for the area. But Dean Cranage points out that the windows (of which there is one more in the building) bond well with the masonry on each side and that their mouldings are precisely the same as those of the pure Perpendicular windows further east.

The sixth bay has in the south wall a third window like those just described but in the north wall one of the more typical Perpendicular design. The seventh bay has windows of the more usual design in both walls. The eighth bay is blind on the south side and has a doorway on the north side similar to those further west. This now opens into a short passage leading to the vestry. The blind south wall has been considerably altered and much rearrangement is evident in the masonry. It was probably at this point that some buildings of the college were attached to the church, for the buttresses have evidently continued southwards as walls of another structure and there is a blocked Caernarvon-headed doorway inside the church at this point. There is also a small window at a high level inside the church which does not appear outside. On the ground may be seen the foundations of a wall parallel with the western buttress, terminating about fifteen feet south of the church in a rounded projection which was probably the foot of a spiral staircase.

The easternmost bay has a small two light window in the south wall which appears to be entirely Pountney Smith's work, of two cinquefoiled ogee-headed lights with panel tracery; in the north wall is the outline of a window which was probakly blocked in 1822 when a monument was erected at this point inside the church. The florid parapets of the chancel with their pierced quatrefoil decoration, tall pinnacles and short gablets in the middle of each bay, belong entirely to Pountney Smith's work but may well be based on some evidence.

The east wall of the church is pierced by a large five-light window with panel tracery with some stylistic features which are earlier than pure Perpendicular. Above it is a horizontal moulded course and above that a statue of Henry IV shown crowned and wearing a jupon with a belt over the skirt of taces. His right hand holds a dagger and there was probably a sword in the left. A bell-shaped plinth runs all round the church which helps to unify it in spite of Pountney Smith's distinguishing parapets over nave and chancel.

The vestry stands apart from the church, a sensible solution to the problem of adding to such a self-contained structure. It is rectangular with a low-pitched roof concealed by plain parapets with gargoyles facing east and west near the corners. That at the south-west seems to be a man carrying a deer and has a remarkably mediaeval quality. The east and west windows are of three lights with slightly unorthodox tracery and there is a single- light window in the north well. The gables are crowned by crosses and there is a doorway at the south- west corner. Above the window on the north side a stone set within a heightened section of parapet bears the arms of the Corbet family.

The interior of the church owes much of its character to Pountney Smith, whose hammerbeam roof dominates. His screen and floor tiles also contribute to the Victorian impression, but it is much to his credit that the arrangement of furnishings, with a long chancel and inward-facing stalls, gives back to the church something of the collegiate atmosphere which it must have had originally. Entrance is usually through the west door, and this leads into the ample tower space. In the south-east corner is a Caernarvon-headed doorway giving access to the staircase, and the existence of a fireplace in the chamber above, together with a small window giving a view of the altar, suggests that this room was used for a dwelling as well as a point from which the sanctus bell might be rung. The upper stage of the tower houses the present bell, which is relatively modern. The tower arch is crudely detailed with roughly chamfered capitals and mouldings which do not tally with those of the rest of the body of the church. The west window, moreover, does not fit well with the surrounding masonry and as it is of good Perpendicular design it may well have been the original west window of the church.

The interior walls like the exterior are faced with squared stone blocks giving a dignified effect, although in the chancel the stone was severely scored in the eighteenth century as a key for plaster and the cuts have been filled with mortar of too dark a colour. The moulded window surrounds add to the dignity of the architectural effect. The floors are tiled throughout in a riot of colours and with groups of four, eight and sixteen tiles making up more complex patterns.

The tiles were produced by Maw and form an outstanding example of the work of this local firm (which was established at Ironbridge). Pountney Smith's great roof is evidently made as light as possible in view of the shallow buttresses provided outside the walls of the church, and it was doubtless for this reason that he chose a hammerbeam design with its lightly pierced geometrical decoration in the spandrels. Shields on the front end of each hammerbeam are painted with the arms of Henry IV, Henry Prince of Wales and twenty of the knights who fought in the battle, and the principal timbers rest on corbels carved as the heads of ecclesiastics, kings and queens which look as though they may in several cases be original. Over the nave the roof is open to the rafters, but over the chancel it is boarded and panelled with enrichment of the west bay which suggests a rood canopy.

The spiky tracery of the roof spendrels is taken up again in the screen and in the canopies of the reredos which, since they rise in front of the east window, are pierced to allow the form of the window to show. The small doorway on the north side of the chancel is of the same form as those in the second bay of the nave and the doorway in the corresponding position on the south, leading to the site of the collegiate buildings, has a Caernarvon arch like the doorway to the tower stair. This suggests that it may be a later insertion than the stonework which surrounds it. There are few monuments on the walls, and the only original features which survive are an ogee-headed piscina (with the bowl shorn off) on the south side of the sanctuary and a triple sedilia nearby with moulded shafts and cinquiefoiled arches. On the north side of the chancel is a monument to the Corbet family inserted in 1822 and near it is a doorway leading along a short passage to the vestry. In the vestry floor is a coffin-shaped arrangement of tiles enclosing a cross which presumably marks the entrance to the Corbet vault below.